Posted on 05/24/2013 10:33:13 PM PDT by darrellmaurina
...Churches have been perhaps the biggest supporters of scouting groups. But today a few pastors in the Birmingham area predicted that the new policy will cause some churches to drop their sponsorship of scouting programs.
The Rev. Harry Reeder, senior pastor of the 4,100-member Briarwood Presbyterian Church and outspoken critic of efforts to change Boy Scout policy on homosexuality, said evangelical churches are a bedrock of support for the Boy Scout tradition in Alabama. But that's now in danger, he said.
"When a church holds to a biblical social ethic of sex only between a man and a woman in monogamous marriage, it cannot support an organization that opposes that," Reeder said. "That would introduce sexual anarchy into the teaching of the church. There will be a significant response from evangelical churches."...
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.al.com ...
Near as I can figure from December 2012 data for ALL BSA units [Cubs, Webelos, Boy Souts, etc.]:
76322 out of 107284 units are church-affiliated.
1646256 out of 2618163 total youths are church-affiliated.
All things being equal, a 50% loss of church-affiliates would be 38166 units and 823128 youths ...
The word "some" ought to be "ALL".
You are so correct;the professionals ruin all voluntary and co-operative efforts.
Professionals demand huge salaries like their fellow leeches in the Red Cross and Goodwill ,basically perverting the original service goal to that of providing high-pay jobs for themselves and their friends.
I have also seen farm, electric, and telephone co-operatives turn from affordable basic services to their owner-members to promoting all kinds of un-needed,expensive changes at the behest of professional managers hired by boards of directors who succumbed to the fallacy that an industry “expert” is always better than the local person.
And those co-ops have either ceased to exist or become indistinguishable from other corporations.
By accepting open homosexuality ,American society has embraced failure.
There is only one problem with your numbers, there are many churches who have said that homosexuality is acceptable. They will not drop the boy scout troops.
I wouldn’t be surprised if sooner rather than later the GSA - Gay Scouts of America - merges with the GSA - the Girl Scouts of America - since the Girl Scouts are run by lesbians.
“The Boy Scouts have been under target by homosexual activists for a long time.”
Look at the bigger picture.
The homosexuals have been targeting every male-dominated pillar of society for the past 100 or so years. The BSA is just its latest victim.
The Boy Scouts of Canada lost 54% of their Boy Scout membership.
How many churches denominations in America say it is acceptable? And their membership numbers?
Understood, yes this is intended as a set up. It’s vintage gay-Alinsky. However, and let us pray as strongly as we can (confession: easy enough for me to say) that God may allow this to be a set up for a waterloo, not for churches and Christians that have stayed faithful, but for “principalities and powers.”
I wonder if any of the “study groups” foresaw a snowball effect? Where a ball of consternation grows and the so called “100th monkey” effect kicks in? (I am not calling conservatives monkeys, but something needs to get them off their dime and maybe this is it, or a piece of it, by divine plan.)
Well said. May the change in policy bring forth a result that the Corruptors did not envision.
You may very well be onto something here. Historically, the 2 organizations really haven't gotten along that well. It goes back to the founding of the BSA in 1910. That same year, the Camp Fire Girls were in the process of organizing. BSA gave them a hand cause BSA saw them as their natural sister organization. Two years later Girl Scouts-USA was founded. There was always friction between BSA and GS-USA over the use of the term "Scout". BSA's 1916 Congressional Charter essentially gave them a copyright on the word in the U.S. This was obviated in 1950 when the GS-USA got their Congressional Charter.
Interestingly, BSA's patron, Waite Phillips, who bequeathed 127,00 acres of his ranch in north cental NM between 1938-41 (which became Philmont Scout Ranch) later made a similar offer to the Camp Fire Girls and the Girl Scouts-USA if they would merge their organizations. They declined the offer.
3/12/2012– The GS-USA celebrated its centennial anniversary. An anniversary event called “Girl Scouts Rock the Mall” was held later in the year on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and drew 250,000 people. The national HQ announced in 2012 an organization-wide campaign to raise U.S.$1-billion by 2017 — U.S.$100-million by the national office and U.S.$900-million by the local councils. The money will help pay for a new advocacy campaign to promote leadership activities for girls both in the U.S. and abroad, e.g., to encourage more of them to pursue science careers. The council consolidation plan, which was approved in 2006 and completed in 2010, added 1,850 employees to the pension plan. Many pension plans are suffering now because of the low interest rates that were introduced after the SEP 2008 financial crisis to help heal the bad economy. Some local councils brought a lawsuit against the national HQ charging that it exacerbated the plan’s problems by offering extra financial incentives to people who opted to take early retirement as a way to soften the blow of merger-related layoffs. The pension plan deficit has now ballooned to more than U.S.$400-million, and councils are being asked to set aside a growing percentage of their payroll to cover the losses.
Between 2003-2012, GS-USA suffered a membership decline from 2,868,085 to 2,291,425 - a 20% decline.
There is already discussion about morphing the co-ed Venturing program into all of the BSA program areas. Apparently this has already happened in other countries. As financial resources/donations become more scare in the Obama Economy, one could see a financial case made to merge BSA and GS-USA. It would be a colossal mistake, but hey, BSA just made 1, why not got for 2?.
We'll likely never know. The National Executive Committee is made up of ~23 members, many of them CEOs and the like. Doubtful they got their hands dirty in the analysis. It would be reasonable to presume that the study groups contracted some of the analyses out to professional organizations. We shall see if a snowball effect transpires over the next 7 months before the new membership policy becomes effective.
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It is not about churches - its about congregations. The national church may say it is ok, but individual congregations may balk.
You gotta remember that the BSA is a volunteer-led organization. The individual congregation [ie: the pastor] may say it is ok, but he still has to have volunteer congregants to lead the troop.
This is no different than individual congregations revolting over birth control, ordination of women, etc.
There is a schism brewing on the horizon for the BSA ...
According to the BSA 2012 Annual Report to the Nation, 63.6% of all youth registerd in the BSA are members of units chartered to religious institutions. The top 6 largest churches (by registered youth) are ...
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 26.2%
United Methodist Church 22.1%
Catholic Church 16.6%
Presbyterian Church (PC-USA, PCA, others) 7.6%
Lutheran Church (ELCA, LC-MS, LC-WS) 7.1%
Baptist Churches (SBC and all others) 6.6%
According to the 2012 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, the top 25 largest churches and their memberships are ...
1. Catholic Church 68,202,492
They still ordain celibate homosexuals. They do not marry homosexuals but will accept homosexual members who are attempting to remain celibate.
2. Southern Baptist 16,136,044
They do not ordain or marry homosexuals, but will accept homosexual members who are attempting to remain celibate.
3. United Methodist 7,679,850
They do not ordain or marry homosexuals, but will accept homosexual members who are attempting to remain celibate. A real possibility that this denomination will go through a schism soon over the issue of homosexuality.
4. Mormon-LDS 6,157,238
They do not ordain or marry homosexuals, but will accept homosexual members who are attempting to remain celibate.
7. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 4,274,855
They do ordain open homosexuals. Moving in the direction of marrying homosexual couples.
9. Assemblies of God 3,030,944
They do not ordain or marry homosexuals, but will accept homosexual members who are attempting to remain celibate.
10. Presbyterian (U.S.A.) 2,675,873
They do ordain open homosexuals. Moving in the direction of marrying homosexual couples.
13. Lutheran - Missouri Synod 2,278,586
They do not ordain or marry homosexuals, but will accept homosexual members who are attempting to remain celibate.
14. Episcopal 1,951,907
They ordain homosexuals and marry homosexual couples.
24. United Church of Christ 1,058,423
They ordain homosexuals and marry homosexual couples.
Presbyterian Church in America 346,814
Here I was just joking around and it may actually may become a reality!
They should end their support and join one of the alternative organizations.
How long before the BSA gets gay scout leaders and federal funding?
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